I’ve been dealing with these things for a few years and need some help. Thought I’d try to get answers on one thread.
Background:
The apple disease mainly occurs starting mid summer. Doesn’t seem to be variety dependent. Spray fungicide program on apples isn’t what I’d call intensive (compared to peaches). It sort of looks like black rot to me, except that the decay isn’t round.
Lastly, here is a mushroom we sometimes find growing around dead peach stumps (sometimes we cut peach trees down, other times pull them out). I’m wondering if this could be Armillaria, but I don’t know enough about mushroom identification to have any confidence about it.
I’m a total amateur but the mushroom looks like a polypore, maybe some kind of ganoderma, e.g. ganoderma tsugae or lucidum. What kind of wood did you find it on?
The Tomato spots look like the pics of bacterial canker in the pics on this website:
The apple rot may be related to lack of calcium. They do not quite look like bitter pit which is what I get on my apple fruit of one variety. Perhaps try foliar sprays of calcium and get a soil test to check soil ph. If you need to add calcium to soil, first evaluate if you have a ph slightly acidic before adding lime. If your soil is too alkaline it can cause improper uptake of nutrients so get the pH right before adding too much soil amendments. I am using a combination of treatments to bring my pH down due to highly alkaline city water supply of 8.4 pH. It’s possible if you use municipal water that you have the same problem
Dennis
Kent, wa
For the apples I am not sure. My first question for you is do the apples crack first and then black/brown regions appear or is it the reverse where the black/brown regions appear and then the apples later crack?
It’s possible it’s a form of sunburn if the black/brown forms first or some Summer rot. If it cracks first it may be your growing conditions make the apples prone to cracking and a secondary infection forms on the cracked areas. In this case you need to find a way to reduce cracking.
Summer rots are often hard to distinguish from one and other. I would try to get some pictures of the affected fruits next year in the early, middle and late stages of the infection. Also take pictures of some of the fruits after you have cut them open since a cross section of the infection can be diagnostic in some cases.
In many cases, even if the infection isn’t identified more Summer sprays can help control the problem.
Here is a link to thread that can help you identify Summer rots and also suggests cultivars that have resistance to rotting.
Thanks to much Dennis. It does look a lot like a bacterial issue. The tomato link was very helpful. I bookmarked it.
Your question caused me to reflect. I think the issue is more with cracking first. I should easily know this, but it happens in the busiest time of summer. Apples are a relatively small portion of our business, so they are one of the first things which get neglected.
I’m now thinking the cracking is probably related to soil too wet and calcium uptake. I quit applying potassium once I learned that K can easily compete with Ca uptake. I may try some foliar sprays of Ca, as Dennis suggests (if not too expensive). And maybe be a bit more diligent on the summer fungicide program.
Thanks for the link to the thread you started on summer rots.
Personally I haven’t had much of a problem with severe cracking of apples. But I did have one year of heavy intense rainfall and I did see some cracking. Some cultivars I know are much more prone to cracking and really I don’t think there is much you can do except switch to crack resistance cultivars since we can’t control rainfall.
Hopefully, @blueberrythrill can comment on this thread since I am pretty sure he has experienced problems with cracking and Summer rots.
We get black, white and bitter rot. Often more than one at a time. I can’t tell them apart so I sent some samples to the Apple pathologist a few years ago. Most of the samples were diagnosed with BR plus one of the other rots. Bitter rot is a big problem here and it’s difficult to manage in a wet season. Some larger growers use tractor mounted sweepers to move leaves, fallen fruit and clippings to the center of the row where it can be mowed. Controls for BR should help with the other rots too.
Recommendation for bitter rot was spray more often with fungicide cocktail. A mix of Captan, Prophyt and Merivon was the suggestion. We don’t like to use Captan too close to harvest because it leaves a film on the Apples. Some field trials in NC showed Merivon was the most effective chemical against bitter rot.
We have seen cracking on Goldrush that looks just like the picture where the rot starts around the edge of the cracks and increases in size.
Mushrooms look like Turkey Tail or False Turkey Tail maybe, but I am not a mycologist or even a run of the mill mushroom nerd, so don’t go by my ID. But I have a neighbor who does a lot of foraging for mushrooms and he’s pointed out a few to me that have this look that were Turkey Tail.
The tomato spots could be bacterial, but if you see many stinkbugs around, they could also be from them feeding on the tomatoes. Usually I don’t see the spots from stinkbugs until tomatoes are quite ripe or almost past ripe, but they are often biting the fruit when green.
